This recording of an OK2Ask online professional learning session from February 2018, opens in Adobe Connect. Differentiate your instruction with Symbaloo Learning Paths, interactive gameboard-style virtual lessons. Create pathways for students to learn at their own speed and infuse them with formative assessment questions, review material, and branching to construct personalized learning paths. Join us and learn how to create a learning path from scratch or by altering one created by another teacher. Learning paths provide real-time progress data and can include resources, articles, videos, and quizzes. Don't miss this opportunity to make learning fun and effective for all learners. Participants will: 1. Learn to create a basic Symbaloo Learning Path; 2. Understand how to use Symbaloo Learning Paths to differentiate classroom instruction; and 3. Plan for the use of Symbaloo Learning Paths in the classroom. This session is appropriate for teachers at all technology levels.

In the Classroom

The archive of this teacher-friendly, hands-on webinar will empower and inspire you to use learning technology in the classroom and for professional productivity. As appropriate, specific classroom examples and ideas have been shared. View the session with a few of your teaching colleagues to find and share new ideas. Find additional information and links to tools at the session resource page. Learn more about OK2Ask and upcoming sessions here.

This recording of an OK2Ask online professional learning session from February 2018, opens in Adobe Connect. Making a learning environment accessible for everyone is critical to a successful inclusive classroom. Today's classrooms are diverse and include English Language Learners and students with learning challenges, whether they have been identified or not. Every teacher needs to be able to create and deliver content in a way that is accessible to each individual student. Fortunately, teachers already have free technologies at their disposal to assist with this. Join us as we explore strategies and tools that facilitate an inclusive learning environment. Participants will: 1. Understand the importance of accessibility; 2. Explore Microsoft tools that can be used to create accessible materials; and 3. Identify an easy new habit, hack, and/or tool they can adopt to help make material accessible for their students. This session is appropriate for teachers at all technology levels.

In the Classroom

The archive of this teacher-friendly, hands-on webinar will empower and inspire you to use learning technology in the classroom and for professional productivity. As appropriate, specific classroom examples and ideas have been shared. View the session with a few of your teaching colleagues to find and share new ideas. Find additional information and links to tools at the session resource page. Learn more about OK2Ask and upcoming sessions here.

This recording of an OK2Ask online professional learning session from January 2018, opens in Adobe Connect. Inspire technology integrated lessons for student learning based on web-based resources. Learn about the features and benefits of your free TeachersFirst membership. This session will briefly share how to find and use resources on TeachersFirst to help you save time. Remember, it is OK2Ask questions at any time! Participants will: 1. Explore TeachersFirst membership features; 2. Identify and share resources to support classroom instruction; and 3. Prepare to use the features of TeachersFirst membership to maximize student learning. This session is appropriate for teachers at all technology levels.

In the Classroom

The archive of this teacher-friendly, hands-on webinar will empower and inspire you to use learning technology in the classroom and for professional productivity. As appropriate, specific classroom examples and ideas have been shared. View the session with a few of your teaching colleagues to find and share new ideas. Find additional information and links to tools at the session resource page. Learn more about OK2Ask and upcoming sessions here.

Create and play your own quizzes with QuizPedia's straightforward and customizable design. Play quizzes without registration or register to create and save your own quizzes. Follow the steps to create your quiz on any device. QuizPedia's format allows the use of images as an option for both questions and responses. Additional options let you set the time quizzes are active or set rules for visibility options.

In the Classroom

Pretest students and allow them to "test out" of material they already know. Learning support teachers will want their students to create their own QuizPedia sets for practice and review of any material. Create your own sets of quizzes, or let students do the work for themselves and each other. Take advantage of quizzes previously developed and available to share with students on your class website. Allow students to create a quiz for other students to take following class presentations and reports.

Dr. Abel Scribe's Research Guides provide concise formatting tools for documentation in several different formats. Also, this site contains a writing test to check knowledge of sentence composition and research and scientific writing style basics. Choose any format to view notes about using that style, then download the guide as a PDF.

In the Classroom

Bookmark this site on classroom computers for use at any time. Be sure to include a link on your class web page for student access from anywhere. Have students print guides to include with writing journals and folders for easy access. Use information from the site for students to compare and contrast different formatting styles. Have cooperative learning groups create online books using a tool such as Bookemon, reviewed here, to demonstrate different formatting options.

World of 7 Billion provides a broad variety of resources and information for teaching about world population. Discover the ever changing world and United State's current population count near the top of each page. Explore the Teachers Resources for activities to use with middle and high school students. Encourage students to participate in the annual video challenge contest sponsored by the site highlighting different global challenges with prizes up to $1,000.

In the Classroom

Encourage students to take part in World of 7 Billion's annual video contest. Benefit from the free lessons for middle and high school students as well as the ideas for school-wide events. Provide time for students to browse through the site and to generate questions about it. Brainstorm not only questions but what students learned from it. Allow groups time to research the economic and social issues that have caused such a change in population and how people live. Challenge students to create a presentation with their findings using Prezi, reviewed here. Have students use a mapping tool such as Zeemaps, reviewed here, to create a map of population changes around the world (with audio stories and pictures included)!

This collection of reviewed resources from TeachersFirst is selected to help teachers and students learn about and use gamification in the classroom. Various subject areas are included in the collection. Explore online workshops to learn more about gamification. Find tools that you can use to gamify your classroom. Remember to start small with gamification and add more to your gamification "toolbox" as you are more comfortable.

In the Classroom

Create your own games for review and classroom activities. As a final assessment, challenge students to create their own games to share with their peers. Use this collection to find the best gamification tools on the TeachersFirst site!

Prism is a tool for "crowdsourcing interpretation" of text. Create your own Prism or browse through Prisms available on the site. To create a Prism, add text and choose options for highlighting such as red for demonstrating foreshadowing or blue for feminism. Before finishing, add the title and author and include credit for the work using their drop-down tool providing options. Watch the introductory video, which resides on YouTube, for a full overview of how to create and use Prism. If your district blocks YouTube, the video may not be viewable. You could always view the video at home and bring it to class "on a stick" to share. Use a tool such as KeepVid, reviewed here, to download the video from YouTube.

In the Classroom

Use Prism to explore text collaboratively with your students. Paste in portions of any text and have students highlight indicated features or ask them to highlight areas of confusion. Students will need a Prism account; however, their work is anonymous when added to Prisms. Use the completed Prisms to assess student understanding and as a springboard for classroom discussions. Use across the curriculum to highlight and interpret texts in all subjects. Create Prisms for newspaper articles from different sources, have students highlight factual information, then compare and contrast information found using an online tool such as Interactive Two Circle Venn Diagram, reviewed here. If students cannot have their own email accounts, consider using a "class set" of Gmail subaccounts, explained here; this tells how to set up Gmail subaccounts to use for any online membership service. Using Gmail subaccounts will provide anonymous interaction within your class.

This recording of an OK2Ask online professional development session from July 2016, opens in Adobe Connect. No time to comb through Chrome's content? Learn about Google Chrome's accessibility features and extensions to best meet you and your students' needs. Google Chrome is the "Magician's Hat" of content built-in the browser. Google Chrome was named because the developer liked fast, and shiny cars. However, the design philosophy was content and not chrome. Chrome has features that are designed for efficiency and ease of use. Chrome is the luxury browser of the web, and it's dashboard rivals that of a luxury car. Explore the Chrome Web Store to learn features and extensions to support and enrich your student's online experience. As a result of this session and through individual follow-up, teachers will: 1. Learn how to locate accessibility features and extensions; 2. Learn how to integrate extensions to best meet your students' needs; 3. Learn extensions and features to support your Google Chrome experience; and 4. Collect extensions to use in your classroom. Remember, it is OK2Ask'® questions at any time! This session is appropriate for teachers at all technology levels.

In the Classroom

The archive of this teacher-friendly, hands-on webinar will empower and inspire you to use learning technology in the classroom and for professional productivity. As appropriate, specific classroom examples and ideas have been shared. View the session with a few of your teaching colleagues to find and share new ideas. Find additional information and links to tools at the session resource page. Learn more about OK2Ask and upcoming sessions here.

This recording of an OK2Ask online professional development session from July 2016, opens in Adobe Connect. Explore the teacher-friendly features of TeachersFirst to help you save time in developing technology-infused lessons. Participants will learn new strategies to incorporate the tools of the web successfully into any classroom. As a result of this session participants will:
(1) Locate resources within TeachersFirst to provide real-world learning experiences for their students; (2) Locate and evaluate effective, web-based tools and resources in support of teaching and learning, both for themselves and for their students; (3) Evaluate TeachersFirst membership features applicable to their individual technology expertise and teaching situation; (4) Find solutions to individual questions or practical problems of their teaching situation by exploring TeachersFirst and/or asking live questions during the session; and (5) Plan to use the features of TeachersFirst's value-added reviews to plan technology-infused lessons. Remember, it's OK2Ask'®. This session is for teachers at ALL technology comfort levels.

In the Classroom

The archive of this teacher-friendly, hands-on webinar will empower and inspire you to use learning technology in the classroom and for professional productivity. As appropriate, specific classroom examples and ideas have been shared. View the session with a few of your teaching colleagues to find and share new ideas. Find additional information and links to tools at the session resource page. Learn more about OK2Ask and upcoming sessions here.

TRAILS is a free online, interactive student assessment using multiple-choice questions on a variety of information literacy skills based on 3rd, 6th, 9th, and 12th grade standards. This easy, flexible tool is for school librarians and teachers to identify strengths and weaknesses in the information-seeking skills of their students. TRAILS can be used for formative and summative evaluations in five category areas: Develop Topic, Identify Potential Sources, Use Search Strategies, Evaluate Sources and Information, Use Information Responsibly, Ethically, and Legally.

In the Classroom

Students can be evaluated in four separate grade-level tests. You must create accounts and new sessions to save student work and have it graded. Individual codes are assigned to students allowing teachers and students to review performance and teachers to generate reports. Questions have been aligned to the Common Core standards.

Designed as an interactive online course this site helps high school students develop the sophisticated research skills needed for college and careers, an important component of most standards. The formal research process is broken down into six steps: Ask Good Questions, Finding Information, Selecting the Best, Putting It Together, Your Presentation, and Making the Grade. Students work through a variety of activities linked from outside sites, including reading articles, watching videos, and completing worksheets. Each module is introduced by Voki avatars, reviewed here. Several popular research tools, such Zotero, reviewed here, and Evernote, reviewed here, are introduced. If your district blocks YouTube, the videos may not be viewable. You could always view them at home and bring them to class "on a stick" to share. Use a tool such as KeepVid, reviewed here, to download the videos from YouTube.

In the Classroom

R4S would be perfect for use as a blended-learning or the flipped classroom experience for upper high school into the first year of college. You can have students work online, or you can download into your course management system. Have students work through all the steps as part of a research assignment, or use only the parts relevant to them. Teachers need to register to receive the text copy of the helpful teacher's guide. Use the site in any subject or curriculum area.

In the Classroom

This rich curricular tool will be useful for teachers of all grade levels and subjects looking for Common Core Standards instructional resources or how to teach research, especially through inquiry learning. Extra materials include documents to help teachers plan a research unit in the classroom and a "backpack" feature that allows search results to be saved, printed, and emailed during a single session. No registration required. Some results may be linked to Ohio-only online electronic databases, but many of the articles will be available to you in local public and school libraries. A stand-alone site found through a power button icon in the upper left corner will take you back to INFOhio which contains password protected Ohio-only content. This review is for the free and accessible resources only.

Originally a desktop application, and now available on mobile devices with browsers, too, SuperNotecard is a virtual note-taking tool based on the traditional 3 x 5 note-cards concept. After creating an account, start a Project where you'll add note cards. Enter text via a simple text editor window. Flexible features allow cards to be edited, moved, and graphically notated. Cards may be organized by Decks, Categories, and tied to Reference source cards with built-in citation help. Simple tutorials will help you get started. Share projects by email. Exporting and importing work is possible. There are templates for fiction, nonfiction, script and flash cards. This site does have a slight learning curve. After five free projects, the cost is $25 per year, but projects may be deleted to stay within the free limit. There is an informative tutorial, created by a high school teacher, available on YouTube. If your district blocks YouTube, the video may not be viewable. You could always view the video at home and bring it to class "on a stick" to share. Use a tool such as KeepVid, reviewed here, to download the video from YouTube.This site includes advertising.

In the Classroom

With the emphasis in many state standards on gathering information from multiple sources, citing textual evidence in reading and writing, and producing argumentative writing and research, students need help in note-taking skills and citing sources. This tool will be useful to teach outlining, note-taking, and organizing. On an interactive whiteboard, or with a projector, demonstrate how to create a project, edit, and organize. The whole class or small groups can work together on one device to outline and gather facts and quotes from a writing sample. Students with email may share their projects with teachers or other students who import a copy into their accounts. Export Project files to review off line. The Flash Card option creates a study tool individuals or groups may use. Help is minimal, but a Community Forum shares usage questions and answers.

This site, delivered via a LibGuide format, is a virtual field trip to a college campus and college library, giving high school students a taste of the higher education experience. Topics emphasize the college and career readiness standards. Short, interesting videos (with transcripts) of college students lead visitors through what to expect, give tips on adjusting, and doing college-level work. Additional links, mostly other college sites, provide more helpful information.

In the Classroom

Find many resources to share and teach about college-level academic requirements. Assign areas to "visit" and incorporate the videos and activities into a blended learning or flipped classroom. A section on assessments and an area for educators have useful ideas for incorporating T2C in the classroom.

Go! Ask, Act, Achieve is a free online interactive and engaging tool for students to learn the formal research process. There is no registration required. The information is divided into three modules, introduced by teenage Voki avatars, reviewed here. Each module links to resources and materials from various reliable sources. Modules may include text, video, and/or audio. Through these activities, students work through each section learning how to select a topic, evaluate, use and cite information, and create a final product. Don't miss the helpful LiveBinder Teachers Guide linked on the right of the menu bar at the very top.

In the Classroom

Go! Ask, Act, Achieve is an easy-to-use introduction which demystifies and simplifies teaching the research process. Use this to meet the Common Core standards for research in a content area. Have students work through the site in sequence or pull out areas to teach skills, as needed. Don't forget to refer to the LiveBinder Teachers Guide for more fabulous ideas for the classroom.

Learn more about taking visual notes at Brain Doodles. Find lesson plans, examples, and videos to help improve your memory; do this with doodles and using the senses of sight, hearing, and touch. This site is actually more than a learn to doodle site. It's more like drawing lessons to help you think. Find lessons about using letters and numbers for images, drawing stick figures, faces and emotions, memory techniques, problem-solving, and how to listen effectively (so important!). There are several videos per lesson. Roll your cursor over the lesson boxes to see titles of videos in a pop-up box. Download the complete lessons in PDF format. If you're not a doodler, maybe you should be! In an article published in "Applied Cognitive Psychology" Jackie Andrade, a professor at the University of Plymouth, stated doodlers find it easier to recall dull information (29 percent more) than non-doodlers.

In the Classroom

Introduce this tool on an interactive whiteboard or projector, explaining some of the research behind doodling, memory techniques, and listening. Students love to draw so focus their attention on drawing to learn by setting up a station/center for students to rotate through during any other stations/centers you might have for math, science, history, writing, and more. If you don't use stations, you may want to include a short lesson as an opener or closer each day. Students could finish the day's lesson at home by putting a link to Brain Doodles on your class website for students and parents to access. Now that's homework your students will be motivated to learn!

Finally, worksheets will be cool! Create interactive worksheets, or use one that is already developed and make it your own with wizer.me. After signing up with email get started with Add Task. Follow the prompts for creation; these include selecting text style and color, and choosing a background, adding student tasks (Text, Video, Link, Image), and more. Select question style: Open Question, Multiple Choice, Matching, and more. Then there are the more unusual type responses like Filling in a Table, Image Tagging, Embedding, and others, with promises of more to come. Share with students by posting the URL given, using a pin code on their worksheet board, or use your Google Classroom account. At the time of this review, wizer.me support was through email and real-time online chat. Wizer.me works on any device with a browser and Internet connection but works best on Chrome and Safari.

In the Classroom

Wizer.me would be an excellent tool to use to implement and/or integrate technology into lessons. Look through worksheets others have created to get an idea of what you can do. The possibilities for using this tool in the classroom are limited only by your imagination! Having students view videos or label images is sure to keep them engaged and interested in your subject. Any subject area teacher will find a use for this tool, and it's free! Use worksheets (lessons) you have created in learning centers, with small groups (the possibilities for differentiating abounds), or as homework. Since these "worksheets" can include video, using wizer.me would be a terrific tool to use to "flip" your classroom.

The Critical Reading Study Guide offers an interactive worksheet for summarizing, reviewing, and studying any reading assignment. Fill in the information for each of the six questions, then click print to create a hard copy of your responses. In addition to the questionnaire, this site offers several other ideas to promote critical reading such as characteristics of critical readers and questions to ask yourself while reading.

In the Classroom

All core content teachers can use this interactive worksheet to help students understand their text book and other informational reading. Creating a study guide such as this will help students stay focused on the reading. Share this site on an interactive whiteboard or projector with students and discuss the information presented. Have students complete the questionnaire as part of any reading assignment. Share a link to this site on your class web page or blog for students and parents to use as an at-home resource. Use student responses to create a poster with an online poster creator, such as Fotojet, reviewed here.

Game of Chromes is a printable set of flash cards teaching about Google and Google tools. Choose "Open Editor" in the tools to edit and customize for your needs. When finished, print double-sided on cardstock to use.

In the Classroom

Print this set of flash cards for use when introducing or reviewing Google tools. Modify and change the cards to fit any unit. For example, create a complete set just for Google Documents or Google Search. Have students edit the flash cards for review on creating slide shows or spreadsheets. Use this set of flash cards as an opening when presenting information on Google to other teachers and staff.